This one-year master’s thesis is a theory-confirming case-study on strategy reports from the Swedish humanitarian aid organization Sida. Its aim is to test Professor Mark Duffield’s theory, which suggests that humanitarian aid is a biopolitical instrument that is used by Western liberal nations in order to contain and control populations in the under-developed world. The theoretical framework is built on Duffield’s nine theoretical statements that are also used as analysis instruments in this study. The method that is used is discourse analysis and it has worked well together with the theoretical tools that are used for the analysis. The main finding is that Sida in its practice is acting as the biopolitical instrument in such way that Duffield suggests. His theorizations are hence considered to be confirmed. My analysis shows that there are gaps between Sida’s strategy plans that are conducted in order to democratize the peoples of the under-developed countries, and the under-developed people’s own will to be represented as subjects to the Western World’s dominance and educative trusteeships.
Keywords: Biopolitics, development, discourse, humanitarian aid, liberalism, security